getting shit straight

worst words in the english language to hear from sweet bitches

'it was really just the booze.'

write 'em down in your moleskine, champ.

don't drop your pen in the trash or next to it

even the difficult things should be straightforward for the tremendously organized future warriors of the post-digital era. even the complicated things should be simple. the important thing is to pick a starting point and start there, but commit yourself to journey and achievement. if you stay at the starting point for terribly long you'll end up looking like the one married woman at the bachelorette party - or worse, hitler. you don't want to be hitler, do you?

so here's one of many possible starting points: when you're sitting at the bar - picture it, you're writing in your moleskine about your very creative ideas and the many ways you can convert them into piles of american cash, are you picturing it? can you smell the cologne rolling off the bartender? he wants to pour you another drink, pay attention - you're sitting there, and there's a garbage can just on the other side of the bar. the surface is slick and it slopes slightly inward (toward the bartender). this is so when you vomit up your expensive beer it will pour into the garbage can. ok? we can't make the logistics any clearer than we already have. you vomit into the garbage can later in the night, when you heroically down several shots to impress that sweet bitch in the booth by the window, red-headed (dyed) and probably sleeping with everyone in the bar who isn't you. right now, your only task is to watch things, to get shit straight as regards gravity, precision, control of immediate space, portraiture...

you're not gonna get to sleep with that sweet bitch, i hope you realize.

oh but it's so simple, hold on tightly to your electro-gel anti-gravity designer rubber-poly-grip combination pen and cellular modem - don't drop it into the vomit trash can. you paid so much for that pen, don't you even care about your possessions? you could have purchased your very own haitian child for less than the pen cost you, yuppie.

bars are immensely difficult and deadly. probably best if you just stay home.

anyway if you DO drop that shit into the trash the barman will be happy to fish it out for you, because he's already covered in barf anyhow. turn up the music.

concerns re: hipness, democracy, personal growth

seems to us like america is having trouble getting shit straight these days - both at home and abroad. a lot of people are saying: why, america? why you do that to me? why you wanna hurt me this way baby? you gave us paris hilton, democracy, many bombs - what can do we do for you? how can we make things better when you won't even talk to me about what's wrong, america?

baby why you blow up my democracy with your bombs, baby?

ok but get past that: hitler fought the forces of freedom and was vanquished, and since then it's been a super victory parade for the forces of freedom. we don't ask you about gerard depardieu, france, so why do you ask us about george bush? hey thailand! we don't complain that your green curry is so freaky hot painful. why you say shit about our war on terror?

yeah that's right we're looking at YOU pakistan!

that said, there are other concerns.

when you go to the bars and clubs, always bring along at least 150 index cards to pass out to sweet bitches and possible business contacts. you can fill out the index cards in advance. ideally they will be various day-glo colours (pink, yellow, incredible green, blue), and each colour will correspond to a particular type of contact that you want to make. see that sweet bitch in the corner? throw him/her an incredible green index card on which you've written your name, the blogspot URL that is most precious to you, perhaps a few words of wisdom gleaned from this month's ESQUIRE magazine. (did you renew your subscription? and your driver's license. are you keeping up with documentation needs, current events? how will you buy booze?) he or she will know whether you're using a high-quality electro-gel combination pen and microwave - that sweet bitch won't be easily fooled.

business contacts let's just say it who really cares what colour you give them, so long as when you finish making out on the rug you remember to shut off the camera.

other facts: pink cards for the homeless. yellow cards for 'future action' items and tremendous shopping lists. write your amazon.com wish list on a blue piece of paper and always have it peeking out of your pocket - oh what's that? can i buy you something from that list? what you say - you like me, my legs?

you will ideally forget this colour system because you will have OFFLOADED your memories, keanu-in-the-matrix-style, onto the index cards. (neo had index cards and he saved the world from the robots by using them judiciously.) others will get back to you. this is grassroots - this is distributed computing. this is the next generation device, peeking out from behind the glutinous mass of the soul-deadened future to share wisdom with the current generation. harness the device, and you're one more step on the cobblestone road to fixing what's wrong with you.

go with your gut

christ knows you've got enough of it!

drawstring pants

one needn't be ashamed of one's proclivities, unless they are intensely horrible or gay - in which case shame is a reasonable course of action. to wit:

on today's gamma-geek, the most organized geek in the history of mankind, drawstring pants (the dp) are friendly, approachable, accessible. they give off an air of casual authority - or is that musk? - because a fellow who dares wear the dp is setting his own rules. he commands the space - in military terms, 'the high ground'. he is saying: 'i am certain of my own immense virility and off-puttingly large genitals, so much so that i will walk around in the equivalent, haberdashery-wise, of a two-legged duffel bag.' a man in the dp is announcing to the world, 'i'm here, you're queer, get used to it.' we all get gayer in comparison. (and remember our opening sentence!)

with the dp you have to accessorize. leave your gameboy advance at home, for christ's sake - is this 12th grade physics class? are you going to sit there in the back of the room like the the other reprobates when we raised you up to be big and strong?

bring your moleskine (need it even be said?), your complicated and yet gaudy 'designer' sneakers, your black t-shirt with the giant iron-on dragon decal. if it is possible, wear exclusively zubaz, which is the natural colour scheme for the dp. if you receive the dp as a gift, by all means take pictures of yourself wearing them, setting them on fire, tearing them into tourniquets to aid victims of office shootings. take those pictures. have you got a digital camera? you have. it's in the pocket of the dp. indeed, most pairs come standard with the camera pre-installed nowadays, because out there on the cutting edge - three or four steps ahead of the other bitches - everything is more colourful, more vivid, and the speed of things is surpassing and terrible. you'll want to set your shutter speed very high, because when the more successful people pass you by in a flash - and they will, the dp can't work miracles - you're gonna have to take action shots. turn the dial as far to the right as it will go. there's tim, your old lab partner from school. he's president of the united states now. he'll pretend not to know you.

god! that right there is a real kick in the pants.

in the drawstring motherfucking pants!

wellesley girl

hey wellesley girl!

was the party amazing? i'm sure it was. that incredible thing you did, where you took the beer bottles and broke them on the table, menacing everyone assembled with the jagged bottle edges before running off with our five dollars...that shit was amazing. probably you're a comparative lit major, so here's the syllabus for the next three weeks of comp lit 203: rhetorics of unbelievable crap in in american whatever:

• week of 2/11/05: don't stab in the face
• week of 2/18/05: american the beautiful
• week of 2/25/05: give us back our motherfucking five dollars

when you graduate you'll have a real job and then you'll know how it feels to not care about anything. until then please feel free to call anytime and maybe we can all get together for dinner? when you're sober it's bad but it's real, at least.

unbelievable achievements in american sport

whom did you root for in the american super bowl event? the american patriot heroes? or the mongrels from philadelphia, cradle of the confederacy, with their allegiance to no one but their own selfishness?

if you rooted for the winning team - team america - then you deserve a break today. write this down, exactly as we have it here. there are no exceptions:

i picked a winner today. tomorrow i'm going to spend time achieving, and then celebrating, and then probably i'm going to spend some time thinking, maybe regretting all the alcohol i drank during the super bowl football championship event. i'm someone, and that's something.

the way your head is spinning around now like your 'techno-hippie' friend who went to the burning man american festival event? that is the liquor spirits. you've really made a spectacle of yourself, and though the future will present at least two dozen more opportunities to get shit straight, for right now there's not a lot you can do but look at yourself in the mirror and cry. the shame you feel is the shame we all feel. did america win tonight? yes. but basically you just lost, AGAIN. christ, show some self-respect. being drunk is pretty much the worst thing you can do. we know: here at gss it's more than just a sin, it's a methodology.

psychedelic drugs

drugs are of course evil, and yet they are very hip - how do we rectify these two simple truths? how do we respond to the imperatives they imply? on this blog we have on occasion made light of the confused state of drug users - maybe this happened only once, we dunno. but really things are simple, and really things are straight: when you use, be sensible. don't invite your family to watch. don't take pictures of your shriveled parts. don't stand in very hot things. don't snort an entire mountain of cocaine just before, for instance, delivering a state of the union address.

the last bit there, you see that? did you see it? that shit is some current events.

tales of gss in the real world

how is today's digital-american getting shit straight? consider this marvelous story!

while walking home from a rock concert - a local band, because local bands are never talented enough to be popular, and liking unpopular things is, to a certain degree, quite important - we at gss stumbled across an amazing sight: fourteen local people, unattractive and yet unashamed, walking in a circle, carrying around placards. 'what do those wonderful signs say?' we asked aloud, and as if miraculously, they turned toward us. politics! we can't repeat, on this family oriented (and yet with the gay-friendly too!) weblog, certain of the phrases written on the signs, but rest assured they were pretty fucking inappropriate.

was it a party? a college prank? someone mentioned labour laws, someone else mentioned morocco abu-jamal. politics!

we whipped out our moleskines - not yet certain what sort of information would be written in them, just to HAVE THEM OUT - and watched carefully. did the placards herald the arrival of some extraordinary force? the circus? were we to be privy to the plans of a team of highly-trained assassins, communicating with one another entirely via posterboard? no. here is what we ended up writing in our moleskine (the miniature this time, quadrille-lined, only $45.99 ordered direct from a team of mole farmers in senegal):

'who are these people? what? shit is this america? going to last much longer?'

get some sleep. things can only get better.

advanced search capabilities

the next stage in self correction involves reaching out to the internet and making some kind of difference. yes it's a paradox, but also yes it's necessary, powerful. soon you're going to need to make the digital realm in your own image the way you've remade the physical realm. the first thing is search (which is a prerequisite for the second thing, 'destroy').

the ideal search program for someone of your particular interests is the brand new tool, located at STONER.GOOGLE.COM. very straightforward: you've spent so much time and energy perfecting your mind, why waste that energy? all that shit you've gotten straight already, you're going to want to take advantage and extra-self-actualize-ate. (technical. don't worry if you don't understand.)

your digital brain should work the way your (now perfected) flesh brain already functions. try and imagine:

you're at home in your loft, working at your apple macintosh laptop computer. you fire up STONER.GOOGLE.COM. you need to know more about the early days of complicated science. you click on the text field and enter: 'cathode ray tube experiment not rutherford but that other guy'. because this powerful digital mind works the way you work - because it wants what you want and obviously smokes the same thing(s) you smoke - it knows to cull, to prune, to trim. it breathes, it crackles. it's american, and it's fucking beautiful.

here are other search terms you might try:

"the girl i met at the phish concert"

"actor fight club probably gay"

"buying books but not from a big commercial chain"

"balaklava makes you look like a terrorist"

go on and try your own! experimentation is the bedrock of scientific knowledge, as everyone knows.